STAT Investigation: Clinical Trial Reporting Failure

STAT examined data reporting for all institutions – federal agencies, universities, hospitals, nonprofits, and corporations – required to report results to ClinicalTrials.gov for at least 20 human experiments since 2008. This visualization shows the first comparative analysis of their performance. Among the groups, just two companies provided trial results within the legal deadline more that half the time. Most – including the National Institutes of Health, which oversees the reporting system – violated the law the vast majority of the time.

The “rays” represent individual entities. Their colors represent the percentage of trial results provided late or not at all. Their lengths represent the average days late for results submitted after the deadline. Their widths represent the number of trials.